The Life of the Spirit. August 8
The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and mysteries—these fed Shakespeare’s youth. Why should they not feed our children’s? That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous and fantastic—has that a merely evil root? No, surely! it is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of “the heaven which lies about us in our infancy;” angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life. It is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth calls those
“.... obstinate questionings,
......
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised.”
Introductory Lecture, Queen’s College.
1848.